Raising Daniels

Martyn Iles

Like all Western countries, the United States has been losing its morals and its Christianized culture. Many people wonder, What’s next?

As in most Christian homes, my parents kept an eye on the things I read and watched as a child. I remember a cabinet full of DVDs that were “approved” for after-school viewing.

One day, a new box set appeared—a series of 12 talks by a man named Ken Ham.

Having run out of episodes of The Flintstones and Inspector Gadget, I thought I’d try something new. I inserted the first DVD into the player.

I binge-watched the whole series.

I still remember that line: “Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.” Actually, I remember most of the major points Ken made. I still draw on some of the material when young folks ask about evolution. Even bigger than that, however, was the fact that these talks—along with some others—caused me to believe in Genesis, to simply take God at his Word that these things truly happened just as he described them.

By the time I went to a secular university, the evolution debate wasn’t such a hot button issue, but the woke worldview and all that goes with it was emerging fast. There was an explosion of race politics, LGBTQ+ ideologies, climate alarmism, abortion, and every kind of flagrant immorality all around me. These were all forces vying for hearts, minds, and lives.

But I believed Genesis, and I believed God. Those facts—and, of course, God’s providence and grace, even more so—played a role in my survival in a diabolically hostile place.

In Scripture, Daniel gives us an example of a young person thrust into an anti-God world, with every evil force vying for his heart, mind, and life. But Daniel “purposed in his heart” (Daniel 1:8, KJV). He knew his God, he knew the truth, and he held firmly onto it.

This gives us a glimpse of hope in a woke world.

Once this wave of cultural change has swept over the West, something will be left standing. It will be the “Daniels” of this generation.

These are the people through whom God will do a great work in a changed world. They are the “weak things” that God will use to “shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). Four young Hebrews versus Babylon—that’s all God needed.

Pray that God will continue to use the ministry of Answers in Genesis to help raise up his Daniels in this generation.